Chris-- This seems to have wandered from the original point of whether B. F. Skinner was a communist (even with a small 'c'). I'll cede your points (I'm not sure if I still have my undergraduate texts on social reform from the early '60s). I'll just note that socialism did not begin with Marx and Engels.
On Apr 12, 2014, at 12:46 PM, Christopher Green wrote: > Well, Paul, you sent me back to look at my undergrad copies of the _Communist > Manifesto_ and Lenin's _State and Revolution_, which is a good thing. > > While you are correct that _Das Kapital_ was mainly about economics (and > history), the _Communist Manifesto_ was a political document through and > through. It was a call to revolution addressed to a proletarian audience, not > to academics or politicians. > > In the _Manifesto_, Marx & Engels said: "The theory of the Communists can be > summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property," but then > they went on to qualify that by conceding that "there is no need to abolish" > "the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant" (p. 96 of the > 1967 Pelican edition, trans by AJP Talyor). Bourgeois "instruments of > production" (factories and large land holdings) were the clear aim. They > specify: "Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products > of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the > labour of others by means of such appropriation" (p. 99). > > In _State and Revolution_, Lenin has a detailed section near the beginning on > the relation between "abolition" and "withering away" of the state. He > attributed the latter phrase to Engels (so I had misremembered that part), > but noted that elsewhere Engels said that the revolution would "end the > state." What would "wither away" (according to Lenin's interpretation) was > the remaining bureaucratic apparatus after the state's head had been lopped > off, so to speak. That nothing even remotely like abolition or withering away > of the state actually happened in the Soviet Union is another matter, having > much to do with your correct observation that Czarist Russia was not at all > the kind of country Marx had in mind because it was largely pre-industrial. > As a result, a whole new theory to deal with what a "proletarian" revolution > might mean for a largely agrarian country had to be made up by Lenin and > others out of whole cloth -- and this is why the Soviet symbol became the > (workman's) hammer and the (farmer's) sickle unified in a cross... And then > there was Stalin's takeover when Lenin suddenly died. I have no illusions > that the Soviet Union would have become a workers utopia had Lenin lived > longer or had Trotsky succeeded him -- revolution nearly always results in > multiple warring factions, only the most brutal of which usually manages to > get the upper hand on the others (see the so-called "Arab Spring" for just > the latest example of this terrible but predictable phenomenon) but Stalin > was something else again: the leader of a Georgian organized crime syndicate > who saw an opportunity to loot the riches of Imperial Russia if he could just > insinuate himself with the right people at a rare moment of complete > governmental breakdown. China too: an agrarian monarchy (having nothing in > common with the conditions Marx had outlined for communist revolution) > overthrown by a brutal, homicidal tyrant who would have taken up any label at > all so long as it enabled him to consolidate personal wealth and power. > > As for kibbutzim and the like, they are tiny models that have no application > to the question of entire communist or socialist societies. You will note, > whatever your opinion of Israel today might be, that the one thing it did not > become was a giant scaled-up kibbutz. > > Chris Paul Brandon Emeritus Professor of Psychology Minnesota State University, Mankato [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=36119 or send a blank email to leave-36119-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
